What to do with macho behaviour?

Teaching seems at times very close to social work. At the start of the lesson pupils and students sometimes first need to relax a little because one of them just witnessed a major row between his parents before cycling to school. As a teacher you need to offer this student some space to cool down. I also know of teachers who give breakfasts to their pupils as many of their kids no longer have the customary bowl of cereals or some toast before they go to school. You should, however, also provide a clear structure as to what you allow in class and what is borderline behaviour. A teacher should try to be an authority but not authoritative.

The other day we had a pupil who refused to listen to a female teacher. The school immediately contacted the parents to explain that the school really couldn’t tolerate that sort of behaviour. Fortunately, the parents were very understanding and supported the school’s point of view. Have you come across similar situations in your teaching contexts? Please share your viewpoints with us.

2 Comments

Interesting topic. I seem to regularly have experiences like the one you mention. These range from students refusing to co-operate to more aggressive behaviour. In the first class at a new uni a couple of years ago 1 the whole class refused to play ball. They didn’t want to do speak and as it was a speaking class this was painful. After a while I just stopped the class to speak to them about it. It turned out that they wanted their old teacher back and I explained that he had changed classes and how important participation was to passing the course. Things then started moving but 1 kid refused to speak or participate. When I went to speak to him he went crazy and I told him to leave which he didn’t. I then moved other students and let him cool off until the end of the class. I then found out that he was having problems with another student but promised to behave better next time.

I wasn’t sure I had handled this right until other teachers said they had had problems too and they generally just left the classroom.

What would or do other people do in situations like this?
Does the old ‘isolation’ strategy work?
Should we always stop the class and speak about the issues or push on? Is a 1 to 1 chat better after the class then tackling the problem in the lesson itself?

Michele Garcia
on 09/11/2011 at 2:09 pm

Hi, Barbara and Phil,

It is an interesting topic. Luckily, I haven’t had to deal with too much in the way of bullies or overly chauvinistic behavior but I have had to deal with what I consider disrespectful interruptions in my classroom, mainly from students who think it’s okay to talk or talk on the cell phone or do any number of things rather than pay attention or participate in the lesson. I always try to remember not to embarrass students in front of their classmates even though once in awhile one of them does something that really makes me want to yell or say something sarcastic and rude. But I know this will just make me look worse in the end, even if the original behavior deserves it (IMO!). I think it’s important to try not to let the students push your buttons although sometimes this is easier said than done. I think the isolation strategy you tried, Phil, was good. I don’t necessarily think waiting until the class is over to say something to a student is a good idea because by then the moment has passed, so maybe it’s better to address the situation immediately.

An interesting and useful book I read which includes a lot of information on discipline from a teacher who has many years of experience working with at-risk teens is “Teaching Outside the Box, How to Grab Students by Their Brains,” by LouAnne Johnson (as an aside, this is the teacher who wrote the book which inspired the movie, “Dangerous Minds”). In a chapter on discipline and elsewhere in the book she makes the point that the teacher should always be in control of the classroom, and that you should control your classroom, not your students. As she points out, certain reactions a teacher has to misbehavior automatically transfer the power to the person who is misbehaving, which is not the result you want. She says that successful, effective displine techniques:

-consider cultural differences
-model the behavior you expect from students
-separate the child from the behavior
-make the student accept responsibility
-allow the student to back down gracefully (I think this one is really important)
-seek solutions instead of simply assigning consequences

and so on (pgs. 146-147, 2nd edition)

Another very useful thing is her “Twelve Steps to Better Discipline,” where she gives suggestions for how to handle classroom disruptions, from ignoring the person to removing the student (the last step). Finally, she includes an “emergency meltdown plan,” which refers to the teacher, not the student!